UTC Website Projects

and CMS migration

What’s the UTC Website Refresh Process?

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Similar to Cajun cooking, where the common understanding is that first you make a roux, before we can migrate to a new CMS, we need to make an inventory.

Simply moving out-of-date content or pages that aren’t working properly would lead to prolonged clean-up in the long run. The website refresh phase of improvement to utc.edu focuses on the clean-up and reorganization of existing content.

To begin the process, we are starting with sites that focus most heavily on students.

From admissions to advising, registration to housing, sections of the website for university departments with direct student contact are going first. To date, the following sections of the website have been completed or are in progress:

  • Main home page and Newsroom
  • Undergraduate Admissions
  • Financial Aid and Scholarships
  • Housing
  • Bursar (scheduled to go live Oct. 29)
  • Mocs One Center (scheduled to go live Nov. 6)
  • Records and Registration (scheduled to go live Nov. 13)
  • International Studies (scheduled to go live Nov. 19)

In November, these sections of the website are scheduled to begin undergoing review:

  • Academic Advisement
  • Veteran and Military Student Services
  • Honors College
  • Student Health Services

For each group, the process follows the steps below to ensure consistency and proper workflow for all participating in the process.

Step 1: Initial intake meeting

The UTC Communications and Marketing Project Director schedules a meeting with departmental stakeholders and additional feedback providers. The meeting is used to gather the department’s requirements for its website refresh. The meeting covers:

  • General design, process, aesthetic considerations
  • Current page(s) analytics
  • PDF review for accessibility
  • Broken links
  • Out-of-date pages
  • Focus on main departmental homepage and subsequent pages as time allows or are necessary for student recruitment, enrollment, or retention
  • Determine who will be the departmental contact for editing work in following steps
  • General timeline agreement for subsequent steps.

Step 2: Internal project review and planning

The Communications and Marketing team gathers all pages and begins designing pages with new, refreshed content.

Step 3: First draft of website

A meeting of the Step 1 intake meeting participants is called, and the new and improved site is revealed. Revisions are discussed, and notes are taken. Afterward, the stakeholders make any further revisions to the templated document the project team provides and then submits requested revisions to the project team to consider and revise. This document is available to the stakeholders online as an editable Google Doc, and production notes from the project team will be added.

For example, one of the department-requested changes might be: “Change the visit button from blue to gold.”

In that case, the project team could respond in a note saying: “Button remains blue for consistency” to explain to the stakeholder why that particular request could not be fulfilled.

Step 4: Final revisions are made

Revisions listed on the initial revision document are made and presented. At this point, only crucial further revisions are possible, such as a date change, or to correct a misspelling, etc.

Step 5: Site goes live

Once the departmental stakeholders and project team agree on the revised content, the site goes live and departmental stakeholder(s) sign-off on the project.

What Is a Content Management System?

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Everything you see on any given website could be considered “content.”

From text to headers and footers, article titles, images, tags, tabs, comment boxes, links to other pages, boxes, calendars, charts and graphs—every piece of information has a unique placement to create the overall design of the page. A content management system, or CMS, is behind all of it, facilitating placement through the creation of templates.

Let’s say you want to have all the titles on your site in the same font type, size and color.

You could manually adjust the title every time you go to post an article. Or the CMS could have a pre-defined template for all titles on your site. Even though the words might change for your title, the way the title displays could be consistent from page to page. The CMS is what allows that to happen. Want an image to display in a banner across the top that always stays the same size? Leave it to the CMS.

Web developers work with a CMS behind the scenes to hammer out all those details so there is consistency across the entire site. The color palette, tabs at the top of the website, the footer seen on every page on a site all are determined so that all the pages of a site are easily navigated, pleasing to the eye and consistent for those seeking information. Regardless of the content you want to convey, templates provide a standard and consistent way of looking at the myriad types of content.

The current UTC website uses both OU Campus and WordPress as content management systems. Within the next 11 months, we will migrate all content to Drupal, an open-source CMS.

Open source simply means the software does not require a purchase or annual maintenance fee and licenses usually are unlimited for the number of users making it very affordable. The Drupal community is large and a lot of information is available online concerning Drupal as a CMS.

That said, it doesn’t mean that Drupal can be popped into the website and used immediately.

Over the next few months, installation, configuration, data migration, testing and training will be necessary to smoothly take us to this new CMS. We believe the end result will be worth the effort.

Come back to this blog for future updates as we progress through the steps ahead.

Website Improvements Underway

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It has been five years since the last redesign and content management system for the University’s website was upgraded. UTC.edu is overdue for improvement.

The improvements will take several months but result in a much better-functioning site; for example:

  • It will target our student recruitment market
  • It will make the site more accessible, and ADA compliant
  • It will become effectively viewable on mobile devices
  • It will greatly enhance the user experience and include simpler content management and archiving for editors campus wide

During the transition, ongoing routine maintenance and updates (edits) to departmental and other sections of the website will be possible.

The ability for campus editors to make changes will continue throughout the project, which will take approximately 12 months.

The project is now moving through sections of the website, prioritized according to impact on student recruitment, student enrollment and current student experience.

To facilitate transparency and regular communication around the project, a blog dedicated to sharing and archiving related information is at blog.utc.edu/web. Regular updates will include:

  • FAQs
  • Project milestones and timelines
  • A platform for contacting the website team directly from the blog page

During this current phase, the website refresh, if you have requests for routine content edits, updates or additions that your current editors are unable to make, there is a form available to request website assistance at https://utc.edu/webrequest, or call Chris Gilligan at 425-4009.

See the FAQ. If it does not address your questions, call us.

  • Chèrie Whipple 425-4549
  • George Heddleston 425-2311
  • Chris Gilligan 425-4009
  • Gina Stafford 425-4382

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

  1. What is being done to the website?
    • A better-functioning and more up-to-date content management system is being implemented, replacing one that is more than five years old.
    • The first step in this process is taking inventory of existing content and revising or removing out-of-date material. Once completed for each of the currently more than 6,000 pages of content on the website, the updated material will move to the new system.
    • Following content migration, the focus will shift to updating the website’s appearance, ease-of use and marketing emphasis.
  2. Will my department’s section of the website be “locked down” or inaccessible to the staff who edit it at any point and, if so, for how long?
    • There will not be prolonged periods of inaccessibility to a website section. For brief time intervals to accommodate technical aspects of “migrating” content to the new system, it will be necessary to prevent changes from being made simultaneously.
    • To the greatest extent possible, these brief periods will be confined to times of least potential impact on routine operations. They will be scheduled and announced well in advance.
    • In the event an unforeseen matter creates an urgent need to change content on a web page, processes are in place to make that possible under any circumstances.
  3. Is the Office of Communications and Marketing removing editor privileges for employees who currently have them?
    • No. Content editors are critical and still needed, especially for the content development stage the project is in currently. Use of the existing system is being reviewed and in cases of editors who have not logged in to OU Campus (the existing content management system) in more than 12 months, we are contacting their departments to determine if there has been staff turnover. A review of security and access is typical and routinely conducted for many systems on campus.
  4. How long will it take to get the new content management system in place?
    • Based on the project’s current status, 11-12 months.
  5. How do you decide which sections of the website to work on?
    • The project is moving through sections of the website prioritized according to impact on student recruitment, student enrollment and the user experience for current students.
  6. How does work on a section of the website begin? Will I know when my department’s website pages are being reviewed or updated?
    • Before any work is begun to review or revise existing content or pages on a departmental website, members of the Communications and Marketing/IT project team schedule a meeting to discuss content needs and priorities with departmental leadership and any other designated contacts from that department. The nature and scope of work are discussed and agreed upon, a timetable is set, and project team members begin departmental site work.
  7. Can a current content editor (using the existing system) continue making copy edits or changes without having to submit a request to the web team to do so?
    • Yes.
  8. What if staff turnover or changes make it necessary to provide training to employees in my department to serve as editors of our website content? Is training on the existing content management system still possible, or does my department have to wait until the new system is implemented for editors to be trained to use it?
    • Generally, training in the use of the system being phased out is not available—however, on a case-by-case basis, particularly extenuating circumstances can make exceptions necessary, and needs will be accommodated.
    • Members of the project and website support teams are happy to work with departmental representatives to ensure that necessary, routine content changes and updates continue. Requests for assistance can be emailed to https://utc.edu/webrequest, and phone calls to discuss needs or ask questions are welcome at: 425-4009. Ask for Chris Gilligan.
    • At the soonest possible point in the project, training in the use of the new content management system will be made available to departmental content editors and is being incorporated into the project plan. Do not be concerned. If you can type in Word, you will quickly learn how to make changes in the new Content Management System.
  9. What difference will these changes make to my department and our section of the website?
    • Remember, your website’s appearance and content should be based on the needs of its visitors—in other words, the user experience.
    • Upgrading and enhancing our content management system will result in an enhanced user experience by:
      • Enabling easier and more intuitive navigation
      • Presenting a more accessible, and ADA compliant site
      • Providing a “mobile-first” orientation that optimizes site performance on smart phones and other mobile devices, now the preference of almost 52 percent of Internet users and greatly preferred by students
    • For those who maintain content on sections of the website, the new system will mean easier and more intuitive posting, archiving and retrieval of archived content.
    • Website maintenance is ongoing and vital. The new content management system will allow UTC to keep the website fresh, engaging and relevant.
  10. Who is on the project team?
    • The Website Refresh and Content Management System (CMS) Migration Project is a joint effort of the Office of Communications and Marketing and the Information Technology department. The core team includes:
      • Project Director: Chèrie Whipple, enterprise applications director, UTC Information Technology
      • Development and Support: Chris Gilligan, Weston Gentry and Michael Z Miller, Office of Communications and Marketing